That’s a very balanced post and therefore it has no place on here :)
From a starting point of 100,000 cases a day and a doubling time of two days then after two weeks it would be 12.8 million cases daily. Clearly it would burn out very quickly so it’s all down to the severity of it. We’ll know very soon.
Thank you and the date we will really know seems to keep getting pushed back. This mornings parliamentary session with the key doctors led to them saying we may not have answers until the first week in January.
At the same time we are being told numbers are doubling every two days. In which case we will surely know soon after that as cases will be high enough to have created changes in hospitals rapidly.
London has gone in the past 4 days :- 9969 - 11,791 - 12,852 - 19,294
That is Omicron + Delta. And Omicron squashing Delta to become dominant.
Which is not the same thing as Omicron doubling indefinitely every two days.
We will see but once Delta has crushed Omicron it may well stop going up steeply and by then may be at its peak of infectivity so may peak quite soon after that.
It happened in South Africa but the UK situation is different on so many levels. We have far more Delta cases to squash.
But I am not sure anyone expects the next 4 days in London to be 30K, 45 K, 60 K, 90 K
If it is then in three weeks all of London will have caught it.
It almost HAS to slow especially as whilst Omicron rises Delta is falling fast and will soon vanish in London. That alone will change the way the numbers fall.
The other regions will all follow London.
North West is on its tail - last 3 days (it FELL 4 days ago) - 3317 - 5345 - 7623.
IF the London pattern continues here we might expect a five figure NW total for the first time ever and many of those cases will be in Greater Manchester, Manchester alone is all but sure to top 1000 cases in a day any time soon.
How high these two regions go remains to be seen. But it looks likely to be a short sharp wave. That is what doctors are fearing and expecting because it could overwhelm health care all at once if not spread over weeks or months as in past waves. With many staff off work too even if not seriously ill cutting into the ability to care for thse who are.
We also do not know how fast numbers fall after the peak. We might get clues from South Africa soon. But we should not expect the UK to mirror SA exactly.
Plus one by one all the other UK regions will follow where London, North West (and it seems in past 2 days Midlands) have led. So that will slow down the wave a bit but not as in past waves by weeks - it looks likely with Omicron only by days, Hence the prediction of trul astounding daily case numbers over the rest of December.
We are likely to set new records many times unfortunately. And that should soon tell us the true consequenceon the health service in patients and likely deaths.
Both WILL go up. It is merely a question of how much. Basically from a little to a lot. With the truth likely somewhere in between.
